Ok ive held off asking the pros for long enough

[Barry the baldy]

AARRGHH, How do you go about skinning your weapons?
I know the procedures and all but do i use the reference picture as the skin or do i search the ne for seperate parts of the gun and add them bit by bit, how do you guys skin.

Just to clarify: Im not asking how to put the skin on the gun, rather how you guys get the pics you use for your skins and do you use the one pic for your skin or find specific closeups and such then use those.

Thank you, i hope someone can put me out of my misery.

[BratZ]

Well I'm no pro and certainly not at texturing ,but I think i get what your asking.

I like to make planes, and try to texture sides,top etc...

It wouldn't look very good texturing it face by face , because its hard to match the texture size and alignment

Now for a Rifle from what I see you normally find a side pic (top view be nice too)
But try to apply the texture in parts, not usually the whole side, but just line up the texture for like the stock,then middle prolly ,then barrel
The barrel you may have to rotate as you texture unless you know how to use the gizmo mapping.

But yes ,you can use the same pic for the whole thing,may have to blend some spots for it to look good.
And be careful if you texture left and right side at one time as one side will be mirrored (reversed)
So i try to texture left side,then mirror my texture and texture the right side
With my planes ,I try not to use anyones pics, and make my own textures, so I am not sure about your question about using same pic to make and texture as I find 3d line views (blueprint) to make the plane and then the texturing is a whole nother humongous job with hours within a paint program.
Rifles normally can be made from a side view pic from what I see

[Barry the baldy]

Thanks for the reply,
Its just as i thought, do you know if its possible to create a skin from scratch? And if so if there are any tutorials or even a place to find where i would start?

Im not too worried by how hard it would be or how time consuming.

Thanks again.

[BratZ]

Sorry  I would have answered sooner but the site that I had used some MS CFS tutorials is down. But heres some help with other plane links.(I make planes ,sorry)
http://www.1java.org/sh/

Look at some of links from that site

And you wondered how time consuming? To me its the biggest and longest time involved in making an addon.